A database is an organized collection of data. Conceptually, data in a database can be organized as one or more tables, where a table is a two-dimensional structure with data values organized in rows and columns. A record of a table contains the data values for one row of the table. A column of the table contains the data values of one field of the table across multiple records (rows) of the table.
In a distributed database system, a database can be spread across multiple database nodes, which can be located at different physical locations and operated by different database servers. A database table can be split, or partitioned, such that different records of the table are stored at different database nodes. Values of a database can be inserted, deleted, edited or otherwise manipulated. Previous approaches to inserting a batch of new records in a partitioned table can be inefficient in terms of the computational load at database nodes and network bandwidth utilization, especially if records are distributed between 3, 4, or more database nodes, or if a batch includes a very large number of records to be inserted.